As I noted in the previous post, we now have the initial exit polls from today’s election which show the “change” bloc bigger than the Netanyahu bloc but likely only by two or three seats. You have 17 or 18 seats for the two predominantly Arab parties, a historic high, based on historically high turnout today among Israel’s Arab/Palestinian citizens. Voting is only stage one of an Israeli election. Now you have to see who if anyone can form a government. It’s not at all clear that anyone will be able to. But with this mixed result you now begin a public battle over the meaning of the results. The opposition is out quickly with a pretty strong argument. The current government has gone from 68 years to apparently 50. That’s a very big drop and as they put it a massive repudiation.
It’s hard to argue with that.
On the other hand, the “change” bloc seems to have 52 or 53 seats. Again, according to the initial exit polls. So they “won” in some sense but judged in these terms it’s not like they crushed the Netanyahu bloc.
The Netanyahu camp’s argument is going to be that Likud is the biggest party. So Netanyahu gets the first shot at forming a government. But that’s only a kind of a soft norm. It’s not a rule. It’s customary. The President is supposed to pick the leader best positioned to form a stable government and usually that means the head of the biggest party. But it’s very hard for Netanyahu to make that case. He has 50 or 51 seats. And the remaining 70 or so seats all come with pretty ironclad commitments not to support him. Never say never. But the paradox of this current moment in Israeli politics is that it is among some of the most rightwing parties in the “change” camp that you have some of the most intense aversion to Netanyahu. So never say never. But everyone is pretty deeply dug in. Eisenkot doesn’t have a dramatically stronger argument. But it’s at least plausbile for him.
I’ll do another post shortly on how the two predominantly Arab parties fit into this.
